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	Female Genital Mutilation: A Mothering Exclusive Report

News and Updates Good News from The Gambia African Activists Come to Santa Fe Read the Activism Alert

Taking on FGM
By Candace Walsh

Business trips to Africa weren't exactly what Sally Blakemore and I foresaw when we were hired on at Mothering. But, they certainly sweeten the deal! Recently, the Pond Foundation approached Peggy O'Mara with the idea of sending representatives from Mothering to Equality Now's Fourth Annual Meeting of the Fund for Grassroots Activism to End FGM (Female Genital Mutilation). Peggy asked if Sally and I would be interested in attending the conference, interviewing the activists, and writing the story for Mothering, and of course, we were!

FGM is a complex issue, dating back to 3100 B.C. It has been classified by world health organizations as violence against women for decades. There are different degrees of FGM, from relatively mild (cutting the prepuce, or hood, of the clitoris) to removal of the clitoris along with the labia majora and minora, and most severe: infibulation, where the birth canal is sewn up to the width of a pencil. The damage that results is mental, sexual, and physical, and also damages women's abilities to urinate, menstruate, and have babies naturally and safely. The journey to eradicate FGM has been successful in many African and Middle Eastern countries, but there are still countries where between 95 and 98 percent of women are mutilated. And, as FGM-practicing populations relocate to the West, FGM travels with them.

In Nairobi, Sally and I will listen to the stories of 18 local grassroots activists from 13 African countries as they present their successes and ongoing challenges in the fight against FGM. As part of the preparation for our trip, Sally and I read Cutting the Rose by Efua Dorkenoo (who will be at the conference as well), a deeply concise and multifaceted book which lays bare the past, present and future of FGM. We learned that some cultures believe that the clitoris is "deadly": that it would kill a baby as it emerged from the womb, or cause a man's penis to fall off on contact. We also learned that in many areas, intact women are not marriageable, and therefore, their very existence is threatened by the refusal to undergo FGM. Sensitively extended education and a broadening of options offered to women are the keys to moving into the future and leaving FGM in the past. Enabling natives of the FGM-practicing cultures to speak out against it has been widely successful so far, and we hope to raise awareness among our readership so that each of you can play a role in rescuing millions of little girls from FGM.

Tomorrow, Sally and I are getting on a series of planes that will eventually deliver us to Kenya 36 hours later. We will begin in Albuquerque, hop over to Dallas, and then it's a long scoot across the Atlantic to Zurich, where we will have a four-hour layover to stretch, do some yoga, and marvel at Swiss precision.

We'll be blogging each day, so please check in here at Mothering.com to read our immediate impressions and experiences. Sally will be posting photos, and, if we're technologically lucky, footage from the conference and the city.

"African women leaders should not accept a fragmented approach to women's health and development. There is such international goodwill towards the campaign for the abolition of FGM. Women leaders should seize this opportunity to galvanize women at grassroots level and at the workplace into a true women's health movement. This is the time for it. Such a movement will provide space for women to discuss their health issues, including all forms of violence against women, within the family and in society in a holistic manner. Women leaders should seize this opportunity." - Efua Dorkenoo, Cutting the Rose.

Leavetaking, October 18th

We began our trip on Tuesday morning. I said goodbye to four-year-old Honoree, kissing her sleepy face in bed. The night before, she ran past the corner of the dining room table and cut her eyelid on the sharp edge. She fell to the floor, bawling, and I scooped her up to assess the damage. I saw a tiny cut near her lash line, and we lay her on the bed, patted the cut with numbing antiseptic on a soft cotton cloth, and helped her to calm down. Her tears were clear tinged with pink, and I thought, just a few millimeters to the south, and she would have injured her eyeball, making my trip into a great big "if."

In the morning, her eyelid is slightly puffy and lavender, a hue of Honoree's favorite color. Peter and I consult and decide to keep her home from school. My mother, who was angelic enough to agree to come be me for the week I am away, will spend a quiet day with them, and Honoree's eyelid will be given the best chance to heal before she goes back to school tomorrow. She has a calendar with days marked off-before and after the trip, with mom's away days highlighted and ready to be x-ed out. But she adores Grandma so much that as much as I would like to feel that she will miss me keenly, I am relieved to conclude that it won't be too distressing for her.

I moved on to the front door, where my mother held Nathaniel, sleepy and content from a recent nursing session. She put him in my arms. His weight was so distributed against me. His body had the particular solidity of the sleepy toddler, when he just wants to meld to me like a baby monkey on its mother's back. I let my nose nuzzle around his head, warm and soft and hard, with its furze of blonde peach fuzz interspersed with newer baby chick fluff. His ear against my mouth was soft and yielding, like a Chinese steamed dumpling. I kissed his cheeks and tears plopped on them, and luckily, still luckily, he did not cry, just looked at me with sleepy, content blue-gray eyes. I gave him back to my mother and walked toward the car, where Peter teased me about the tear stripes in my tinted moisturizer.

It is Nathaniel who will be feeling the brunt, barring any unforeseen massive developments of independence. He has slept next to Peter (without me) here and there, for a few hours, but never through the night. He is a big night nurser, and though he likes daytime milk bottles as a kind of novelty, I wonder how they will go over in the wee hours when he is just used to rooting around until he finds his preferred boob on the right, latching on, and getting a nice relaxing breastmilk infusion that eases him back into deep, centered, warm-belly sleep. When I voiced my worries to Peter some days ago, he said, "When you're not here, he doesn't like it, but he deals with it. When he wakes up and you're not there, I hold him or walk with him and he goes back to sleep. It will be okay." Another thing that soothes me is that in his waking hours, he is a happy muncher at the buffet table of available foods. He won't go hungry.

"You are so brave," Peter kept telling me. "I am so proud of you."

"Thank you," I said, patting my face dry and shaking off that Leaving feeling so that I can make space for the Excitement feeling, the Exquisite Pleasure of the Plane Trip without Wilding Wiggly Monkeys feeling, the Bonding Further with Sally feeling. But that's where it ends. I really can't imagine, beyond a small pool of abstract images and associations, what it will be like to land in AFRICA!

The Journey, October 18th and 19th

Sally and I slide into our first set of seats, the American Airlines mountain jump from Albuquerque to Dallas-Forth Worth. We are full and a little mellowed by our airport breakfast of omelets and an uncharacteristically timed celebratory cocktail each. I had a strawberry margarita, she had a bloody Mary. My omelet contained a necessary bracing of green chiles (which I would not be having for a while).

Things we do to make the time go by:

• Swap tales of paying our magazine and publishing dues, aka working for mean people in New York
• Talk about what our husbands do that makes us all warm and fuzzy vs. what they do that triggers us to high heaven. Y'know, girl talk.
• Notice how big and engorged my right boob is getting as the hours go by and no Nathaniel materializes to nurse
• Take vigorous, goose-steppy walks up and down the plane aisles
• Eat an actual meal on an airplane, not just pretzels and a beverage. It felt so 1998! And yet so sublime.

Sally watches SeaBiscuit and Big Fish. The two single movies I saw last year, and they are both the ones that happen to be available for viewing. My tough luck. I blow happily through Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone (thanks, Melissa!), start Kent Haruf's Plainsong (asante sana, Kathy and Matt), and resume reading Sarah Erdman's Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, a Peace Corps' volunteer's memoir of her two years in a Northern Cote D'Ivoirian village (lent to me by my friend Ellen, a former Peace Corps volunteer). FGM (female genital mutilation) comes up, as it must. There, traditionally, women are mutilated a few days before their wedding ceremonies, in what Erdman calls the "milder" form of FGM, removal of the clitoris. The bride is then bundled onto a moped, wrapped in a pagne, or wrapped fabric garment, that covers her eyes. She sits backwards on the moped to be bumpily delivered to her husband's town. The thought of having that fresh wound paired with sitting on a moped in that condition makes my soul shrink in horror.

Other times that Erdman touches on FGM in Nambonkaha: one girl who loses too much blood after the procedure, fevered and delirious; little five-year-old girls , their faces pained, their beautiful innocent elfin aspect now leaden, walking painfully; one of the most intelligent and educated men in the village, who disagrees with FGM, stepping aside when it is his turn to get married and allowing the procedure without protest; the belief in the village that their village's curse is that any uncut woman who gives birth will give birth to a dead or sickly baby. One of the men in the village says, "The only way to end FGM is to round up all of the vielles (midwives) and put them in jail."

There is so much hopelessness and impotence in the perceptions of FGM in that book, which is based on a time about twenty years ago. I am so happy to see how much the thinking has changed about how to address FGM, and how much positive change has occurred as a result. Instead of having to throw traditional practitioners in jail, many practitioners have received grants for new job training, and education on how FGM causes so many problems for women's future health.

At the conference, I will hear the freshest reports from women working in the field, in their own communities, to change and eliminate the practice. Realizing that ritual is a very powerful element in FGM, Kenyan women leaders have introduced new ways of "becoming a woman" in groups, that do not include communal vaginal cutting. The President of Kenya's wife has taken an active part in this powerfully successful movement.

The plane lands at the Swiss airport, and Sally and I are immediately in a very unique incarnation of an airport. There is no dinge. Tall dimensions and architectural mastery have created long tall corridors of silver, glass, and white, with red accents. We get our bearings and wander around the uber-svelte cafe seating, in modular creme caramel and dusty teal, the long sleek cafe counters with lines of hanging lighting dangling above like raindrops frozen in flight. Newsstands carry a wide selection of fashion magazines from many cultures, with one German mag's cover sporting a woman in a lovely blouse that just happens to reveal her entire breast. I like the blase depiction of her. The image could perfectly fittingly include a happy little nursing child (the NEW NURSING SHIRT!), as opposed to Paris Hilton on a Lad magazine's cover festooned in black electrical wire, slick red lipgloss, and nothing else. My other big Zurich airport moment was looking at the Swatches in an actual Swatch store in actual Switzerland! It was like drinking Evian water from the Evian spring in France. How much more plainly can I say that "I was born in 1972"?

Sleep caught up with me on the third and final leg of plane travel from Zurich to Nairobi. I kept on nodding off and waking up a few minutes later with a lovely strand of drool emerging from my mouth. Sally watched four movies in a row with the swank Swiss Airbus's individual video monitor system. I meant to catch a flick myself, but fell asleep with the remote in my hand before I could even make a selection. Woke up to a throbbing boob. One of the flight attendants was kind enough to give me a bag of ice. I had inconveniently packed my breast pump in my checked luggage, and attempting to self-express milk in the airplane bathroom was messy and extremely slow going. I fantasized about grabbing the 15-month-old Swiss baby running up and down the aisles and giving him a furtive and relieving mouthful. But his mother, with the Jamie Lee Curtis haircut, probably would have me arrested, and I wouldn't blame her. Crazy drooling Mothering employee force-nurses innocent Swiss Child! News at 11. Nope, Das geht nicht.

We landed. Stepping stiffly off the plane, we were met with fumes of gasoline and beautiful inlaid wood ceilings cheek by jowl with crusty yellow-painted concrete moldings and linoleum floors. The lighting was dim fluorescent, and the vibe was definitely LaGuardia in the Seventies. Customs was a breeze, and we walked down a stairway to baggage claim. Airport trivia: in Nairobi, the Smarte Cartes are free, by the way. Barring the fact that you tip the attendants who bring you one unbidded. But I'd much rather give some cash to a real live person anyway, so that is more than cool.

Sally and Candace Meet Nairobi. Discuss

Our driver, Andrew, is waiting with a sign that has our names and Equality Now. He leads us to a small car-a Toyota Sprinter, parked right next to a Nissan Sunny. The outside air was balmy and soft, acacia and palm trees swaying in the dusk breeze. All of our luggage fit in the small trunk, except for Sally's gray suitcase, so he slid it in the back seat next to her, and I walked over to the front seat before realizing, ding! That the steering wheel is on the right in Kenya. So I circled back to the left with a laugh and sat down. Andrew took off, deftly maneuvering the traffic. We passed empty billboards interspersed with ones for DHL, Firestone, AKIMBO cooking fat ("the heart of every meal"), Fanta Soda "Be Cool, Stay Mamboocha," ("What does Mamboocha mean, Andrew?" "Oh, it's Hindi," he says dismissively.) As we move into real city traffic, the NY-style chemical smelling air freshener swings inches from my nose and I crack the window to get some relief, which ends up being heavy duty exhaust-enriched air. The public transportation of Nairobi consists of dented vans, VW-style and by other makers. Each one has its own personality, from the designated Blessed Lady, spelled out in large glittery sticker capital letters on the back window, to the Bila Shame Bile Haya van, to the Wisdom Bus, the Perfect Storm bus, the Brenda Bus lit inside with neon green fluorescent light, and the "Euro" Bus with a big Mickey Mouse sticker on its back window. They are all packed with Kenyans, sitting next to one another at full capacity.

I strain to see more in the dark. Men swarm in and out of the traffic, holding rolled up white paper tubes that contain acacia nuts. A man on the bus signals to one, and as the bus takes off, they make their exchange while the vendor runs alongside as it accelerates. He moves away, pocketing the change, glad to have made a sale.

The air is infused with car fumes and something else, something acrid. It smells a lot like the air did right after 9/11 in New York. A woman with three children in school uniforms runs across the highway. That's another thing-people just run across really busy expressways in the dark, with what they must believe is an adequate margin for safe passage. There are miles without traffic lights, and no pedestrian walkways, so it is a necessity.

We emerge from the city center, which has been cloaked in darkness, and turn into the driveway to the Safari Park Hotel. Uniformed guards approach at the high metal gate, and confer with Andrew. They open the gate and let us in. Andrew drives along a winding entrance, and stops at the curb in front of a large, elegant lodge-style building. A Kenyan man in long red tuxedo tails helps us out and gathers our luggage. We pay and tip Andrew and he gives us his card.

Inside, flagstone floors line the bottom of a large, round, cathedral-ceilinged space, dominated by a huge, very realistic elephant sculpture. We walk up to the counter and are greeted by a woman who gives us a warm washcloth and a glass of papaya juice edged in sugar. The bellhop accompanies us to our rooms, which are a pleasant walk from the main building. The complex is beautifully landscaped, with rolling grassy lawns, trees and plants, but it feels very natural. Our rooms are next door to each other, and open up to a portico on one side and a little covered porch on the other. The beds are large and have functional and also beautiful mosquito netting canopies. I take a quick shower before we go back to one of the restaurants for a quick bite and drink before bed. Pathways from the main building to the café wind around trickling pools, and the air is filled with distant music, and animal sounds from frogs, bugs, and birds. Pools of water wander with us. We look at each other, grinning, as if to say, "Pinch me," and I tell Sally how much Peter would be completely spazzing out (in his reserved and tasteful way, of course, wink wink) with traveler's happiness, if he were here.

Before the Conference Oct 20th and 21st

Writing on a smudge-keyed computer keyboard with a logy capital key, in the lobby with my friend Mr. Elephant standing mere feet away.

Last night was our first real encounter with some of the activists from the African countries fighting FGM.

I spoke with Eunice from Marakwet in Kenya, a region that does still perform FGM regularly. She said that some of the chiefs look up at the position of the stars to determine whether it is a good time to perform FGM. She said that she is engaged in sensitizing the girls to the issue in seminars in schools, and that they pass out stickers and pens with anti-FGM logos. She runs clubs that give a one-week training course with gifts and food.

Unfortunately, the FGM ritual for girls in Marakwet is the only time they feel celebrated. "It's like a graduation," Eunice said. When she asked the girls why they would want to be cut, they said, "Because it's the place where we get food."

It gives them pride to be in a position to provide provisions for themselves and their families, and it seems to me that they are so starving for affirmation and the ability to provide that they willingly undergo this damaging-for-life mutilation.

I asked Eunice if Mothering readers could contribute presents, money, and positive attention, even from afar, that would give them another way to feel good about themselves. Here's the address:

Eunice Yego
Marakwet Girls and Women Project
PO Box 6599-30100, Eldoret
Marakwet, Kenya

I asked Eunice if Mothering readers could contribute presents, money, and positive attention, even from afar, that would give them another way to feel good about themselves. She nodded and I should get her address today.

I have to run to the beginning of the conference in 3 minutes but also quickly wanted to mention that I spoke to Florence from Ghana where FGM rates are 19 percent, concentrated in the upper east and upper west areas. In the upper west, girls are mutilated from the age of 3 weeks to 6 years, in the cultural belief that the clitoris is dirty. In the upper east area it is done at puberty. There is a law against FGM there and 2 mutilators are currently in prison. They have also given former cutters seed capital to become farmers and to raise animals instead. She showed me images of a ceremony where ten men handed over their mutilating tools, and lay them on the table. They look to be made of bone, and are white and long and sharp, like something to gut and fillet fish.

The conference is starting, I will be back soon with more dispatches.

At the Conference Oct 22nd

Well, today was intense. It was the real deal--the day when 18 activists from 13 different countries gave progress reports on their triumphs and setbacks of the last year. There were many commonalities couched in jargon--"we are sensitizing people to the harmful effects of FGM," "carrying out lobbying," "breaking the taboos," "distributing stickers..."

I'm all about respecting what is effective, strategizing, not blowing it, all of that. But you know what? Why is the current "best way" to respond a way that still permits girls to get maimed daily until we are able facilitate getting the message across in a diplomatic matter? Why did so many Jews die in concentration camps while generals strategized on how to win the war? Why didn't the train tracks get bombed during World War II after Germany's enemies knew who was in the train cars and what their fates were going to be?

This issue could make a fascist of me. But, if all of the culprits were thrown in jail, the jail would be filled with the moms, dads, grandmothers, potential in laws, imams, chiefs, midwives (yes, midwives), older sisters, and aunts. And the girls would be uncut but they would be...completely alone. Is that a hump to get over, a possible Utopia, or just the wrong way of doing things? I don't know.

I said uncut. That is a nice way of putting it. Today in the conference one of the participants threw some truth up on the video screen formerly used for bland power point presentations. A blurry brown something filled the screen. The camera pulls back and you see it--a naked baby girl, perhaps one and a half, each limb held down by an adult, her legs spread to show what we all see when we change a diaper and want to be thorough. The baby girl is crying softly. She has some kind of paste on part of her face. The man who is not holding down a limb has this...thing in his hand. It looks like an oversized guitar pick. A shell you would pick up on the beach. It's beige against her cocoa-brown skin. He spreads her tiny labia and digs in, digs in. Her whimpering turns into the worst kind of agonized howl. Not a stubbed toe. Not a skinned knee. No, this is keening that should only emerge from the scene of a car accident. This is the crying that happens when a mother throws herself on her child's grave. Worse. A hand in a garbage disposal. An industrial accident. He pulls back, brings the edge against the other side. In that interim her cry lessens without stopping being what it is, a sound that shreds my "journalistic distance." Back in he goes, and she howls again, her entire body bucking, her little face a mask of torture.

So, this is the thing we need to see, after and before more droning facts and figures, inspirational stories, statistics, inroads, thwartings. It shocks me out of my note-taking trance. It makes me hide inside some corner of my body. I respond by crying. But I don't want to cry too much, I have a job to do. Yes? So I wipe as many tears as I can and then go back to taking notes. And then I get tired, so tired. My feet swell in my shoes like rising bread dough. I want to give in to my sleepy stupor and go hide behind the randomly standing armoire near the corner and go to sleep. I just can't be present right now. It's too awful.

It takes several more speakers and a closing statement by Jessica Neuwirth, founder and president of Equality Now ( she's one of those progressive want-to-change-the-world types who graduated college and actually did start an organization that IS changing the world for the better), a dazed walk to my room, a change for the closing reception, onto the bus that takes us through the real Nairobi, not our blessedly sheltered resort compound, to the Norfolk Hotel for surreal satay and spring rolls and smoked salmon mousse in mini tortilla shells. I have a pint of the local beer, Horner, and start to re-alight into the space I occupy. I talk to Wendy from the Pond Foundation and she tells me that she experiences the same thing every time she is up against the deepest reality of FGM. She leaves her body. But then she comes back to throw her weight against the mountain of change that is slowly, surely shifting toward safety for girls and women.

There's no sand to stick my head in anymore.

Tomorrow morning we get on a bus and drive two and a half hours to Narok, a Maasai village, to visit with Agnes Pareiyo, one of the most prominent anti-FGM activists, who used to walk from village to village with a wooden model of a vagina--one with pieces that come out to demonstrate what is lost with each degree of mutilation--excision, removal of labia, infibulation. Now she does it by car. Countless villages gave up FGM because of Agnes. She is a friend of Eve Ensler. Drew Barrymore just dropped by. Agnes is being honored by the UN on Monday as Woman of the Year or something to that effect. There is a sea change happening. I just wish everyone was swimming in her sea. Right now.

Out and About Oct 23rd

Agnes is being named UN Person of the Year tomorrow (Monday) at 1pm, and Sally and I are lucky enough to be spending the day with her and attending the ceremony. This award is a huge milestone for the cause. Agnes has also been fortunate enough to be hooked up with The Vagina Monologues' Eve Ensler. Eve donated money to create a building for the school, and she also went on Oprah to talk about Agnes and the girls. Can you think of anything more appropriate to the V-Day movement than putting some of that money toward making the world safer for vaginas?

Tangent: We had dinner last night with Efua Dorkenoo and the Pond Foundation's Wendy Flick. Efua wrote Cutting the Rose ten years ago, the first comprehensive book on FGM out there. This year, a new edition is being published, but it really goes beyond the first, which had more of an academic slant counterbalanced with sound anecdotal components.

Cutting the Rose was named one of the 100 best African books of the 20th Century. Wow, right? One of the upcoming, second edition's most useful additions is that it shows the male and female genitalia side by side, and points out how they correspond. In case your biology is a little rusty (mine sure is), babies' genitalia are undifferentiated up until a certain point of development in the womb. The foreskin and glans of the penis corresponds to the clitoral hood and the clitoris, the ovaries correspond to the testes, etc. Well, Efua shows how extreme even the most "mild" form of FGM is (clitoridectomy), by pointing out that it's the same thing as chopping off the whole first few inches of the penis. [Edited 11/1 to incorporate some generously communicated anatomical corrections and philosophical clarifications from reader Jane McClintock]

Efua lectures at Harvard, and is just a beautiful woman with such incredibly powerful and warm energy. If I were one of Oprah's producers I would book her and her book launch in a Chi-town minute. Let's all take a minute to vibe/pray/meditate/wish for that.

ANYWAY, back to the Narok school adventure. Sally and I and the Equality Now staff and all of the assembled activists climbed on two of the buses that get so much done in Kenya. Luckily, they were some steps above the tricked out fuzz-mobiles that Nairobi is so rife with. These were clean, unadorned, and in pretty good shape. I got on the larger one, thinking it would be more spacious and more cushy: what a mistake. Or maybe my mistake was not using my temperamental stomach as an excuse to nab the front seat (not wanting to feel like coming off as an Entitled American). Or maybe it was having prosciutto on my pizza the night before. Or drinking coffee with not enough good solid breakfast food to soften the blow. Three hours of driving went by, and I got progressively sicker.

First, we had to get out of Nairobi. That was fine, I was definitely feeling satisfaction in that the fearsomeness was becoming old hat (did I mention that the driving situation in Nairobi is indistinguishable from a giant pack of meth-heads playing simultaneous chicken at a monster truck rally?). Plus I could focus on the jacaranda trees, which are one of the most beautiful things you could ever imagine. They're like a regular oak tree or something, but all of the "leaves" consist of lavender-colored flowers. Just imagine a tree with purple leaves and you're there. They're in bloom right now…Then we had some outskirts highway driving (colorful yet decrepit-looking rows of metal and wooden shacks, folks hanging out) before shazaam—Kenya's pure majesty opened up. Gi-normous vistas of huge valleys and meadows dotted with acacia trees and grasses. Impalas running by. Small houses made with gridworks of woven branches, the squares filled in with cow patties.

Smooth blacktop became blacktop pocked with potholes as big as bathtubs. Then they became dirt roads that were like a bunch of bowling alley gutters braided together randomly. Then you've got your inexplicable roadblocks—home-made tire-piercing strips—literally long lengths of scrap metal with nine-inch-nails pounded through them, lying on the road—with some guy who is supposed to look sort of official sitting on a folding chair, nodding at us to go by (this was a best case scenario. I wouldn't want to fit their profile of who to pull over and mess with). Sometimes he wore a Kangol-esque beret. Sometimes he was just a dude in raggedly clothes hanging out with his wife and kids. About 2.5 hours in, my stomach was an acid bath and my mouth was lined in polar fleece. I asked one of my bus mates for a bottle of water but she felt very strongly that it was to be saved for our lunch once we got there, and I was too wan to push it, but I should have. It was a perfect time to say "Mee mee nee ganjwa," or, "I feel sick."

We finally got to Narok. As we approached, Maasai herders began to dot the landscape. Tall, dark as ebony, very elongated. The men wrap themselves from their slightly hunched shoulders to the hips in bright red plaid blankets, and then their long, skinny legs emerge and seem to go on forever. The women, traditionally with heads shaven, also wrap themselves in lengths of brightly colored, layered fabrics, which serve as skirts and shawls. They have beautifully beaded collar-type necklaces that extend in many lengths, and their stretched earlobes are laden with bright, beaded tubular earrings.

The School - Tasaru Girls Rescue Centre

As we pulled up to the school, I noted its modest yet functional cinder block exterior. We took a short tour and met the girls, beautiful children with glowing faces. We brought out our breakfast boxes, sat down at the cafeteria tables, so that we could eat before Agnes' presentation. The school provided delicious, super hot tea from thermoses. First it soothed me and then I started to feel really sick and then ran to the bathroom. I just started to sob and I didn't know why. It was all getting to me. In retrospect I think I was still processing the impact of seeing that little baby mutilated in the footage at the conference the day before. I collected myself as much as I could, chiding myself for being so emotional when it was my job to record information and be a witness, not a weak idiot. We sat down in the meeting room for the presentation. The purpose of the visit was most primarily to give the other activists from 13 other African countries a chance to learn from Agnes' very successful model. First the girls sang a beautiful song and kept time by clapping in a whole-body, swooping motion. Then the Maasai women came up to the front and sang their own song, very, very deep and heavy and full of emotion. They were extremely decked out with their fabrics, and beaded jewelry, and I felt honored to see them in their element. A popular clothing motif was that of red and black playing card deck clubs and spades, mixed with other indigenous imagery. Cross-cultural fusion. And why not?

Agnes got up to speak, and I was struck by her warmth and ease. She is just a regular person who is on the front lines of positive change that personally affects the lives of countless girls and women. She started out walking from town to town with a wooden model of a woman's lower torso, and interchangeable pieces that depict the different levels of FGM and their negative effects on women's ability to give birth, have sex, enjoy sexuality, menstruate and urinate. In the beginning, she got death threats. Now, she is the deputy mayor of Narok and as I mentioned, soon to be declared the UN Person of the Year.

There are so many women who are poised to be as fully realized and effective as Agnes, and she is all about sharing her methods so that they can be. But it's not just information. I spoke with Dr. Isatou Tourey from the Gambia, a brilliant, articulate, and charismatic woman who came to the conference and had so many incredible things to say. She is riveting. The Gambian government gave her land to make a safe house of her own, just like Agnes' place, but she will lose this land if she doesn't get the funds to build in two years' time. All of these women are so incredibly ABLE to do so much good, they just need money. I can't think of a more satisfying way to help save the world. Instead of worrying that what I give to a huge organization will be siphoned off by corrupt individuals and absorbed by bureaucratic waste, these dollars are hitting the problems hard. Sally called money "green energy," and I think that is so apt.

After Agnes spoke, I slipped out to rest in the van. My stomach felt like it was being poked with little knives, and I felt waves of inexplicable exhaustion. I fell asleep for two hours and had so many beautiful and soothing dreams.

When I woke and walked back into the school, I ran into Sally in the hallway. She fell into my arms shaking with sobs. The girls had shared their stories and it was so deeply affecting that my extremely sassy, buoyant, wise and centered travel partner was touched to the core and feeling so much pain. Wendy said last night at dinner that we are all one on some level, and it reminded me of the thought that we are can only evolve as fast as the world is made a safe place for its most embattled human.

I also thought about how as mothers, we have the hardest time parenting our child when she or he is at the age that we were at when we encountered the most negative or rejecting energy from our own parents. Where did I read that? I want to give the right credit, maybe it'll come to me later. And I thought that as little girls, most of us, at some point, were hurt in a way that was specific to being little girls, and that we have to confront our own pain and move through it not only to be the best mothers to our little girls, but also to be able to look FGM in the eye and be part of the solution to get rid of it. As we do that, we heal ourselves.

I'll leave you with two of the stories that Sally heard from a ten-year-old girl when I was passed out in the van.

"I knew that my father wanted me to be cut, and my mother wanted me to make up my own mind. My father insisted because he wanted to marry me off and felt that it was part of making a good marriage.

My mother and my father got into a huge fight, and I ran away to Agnes because I knew there was a safe place to go. My father said, "I will kill that girl," because he could not come and get me, there are guards and she is backed up by the police. Agnes said, "You know where the gate is, you just try! You have to come through me." He didn't come.

My mother comes to visit me. I have been there a year. I avoided being cut. I have heard that my father is gravely ill, and I still love him, but I cannot see him because he will kill me from his deathbed." She broke down at that point and wept.

Another story: Two sisters, sixteen and seventeen, came to Agnes to avoid mutilation. Agnes and the staff worked with the parents to sensitize them and show them how it was bad and wrong and harmful. Over time, the parents agreed and the girls were allowed to go back home.

However, their brothers grabbed them and forced them out of the house when the parents weren't around. They brought them to a FGM cutter and helped to hold the two sisters down while they were mutilated. The girls live with Agnes again.

The UN in Kenya Person of the Year Ceremony honoring Agnes Pareyio October 25th

As we got in the taxi heading for the UN, Sally and Wendy and I saw a whole new side of Nairobi. The Kigiri Road, which leads to the UN, is an elegant, beautifully maintained and landscaped avenue which is lined with embassies and diplomatic residences from around the world. Lush green trees, grass, and bushes decorated the views and yielded up peeks of impressive mansions in various architectural styles.

Once we got to the UN's address, we were confronted with massive security barriers. Dropping Agnes' name didn't do much to get us through, and we were about to give up hope when the buses from Narok arrived, and Agnes, the schoolgirls in uniform, and her entourage of Maasai women spilled out in full regalia. We were instantly pulled through along with them, and trotted down lots of hallways and corridors and breezeways to the outside space where the ceremony was to take place. Why the hurry? Well, like any true superstar, or anyone on Africa time, Agnes was a little late. The master of ceremonies, a starchy fellow, turned to greet us mid-speech, mentioning her timeliness with a hint of harrumph.

The schoolgirls were led on stage to sing a song that protested early marriage, and the Maasai women followed to sing a song that was a prayer to God to lessen their daily burden. As Agnes was introduced stirringly by a UN representative, and made her way to the stage, many of the women and girls were overtaken with emotion. She began her speech. These are some of the things she said:

"I grew up as a rural Maasai girl, and I was forced to be mutilated at the age of fourteen, because I was told I was ripe enough for it, and that it was my preparation for being a woman. It is the tradition that daughters can only speak to their fathers through their mothers, and I begged my mother to tell my father that I didn't want it to happen to me. My mother was ambivalent about it, but my father insisted…in the Bible, it says, ‘God made us in his own image, He looked at us and found us good.' And we should remain like that—the way we were made."

Agnes got choked up at some points, but she emanated strength as she accepted the UN's honor. Her posture was so fierce and strong that she looked to me like a shield. Within her image, I saw the end of FGM.

After the ceremony, I had the chance to ask her a few questions.

Q: Were you born strong, or did you have to become that way?
A: I'm just strong.
Q: What happens when you encounter an obstacle?
A: I keep fighting until it's gone.
Q: Do you ever get discouraged?
A: Yes, I get discouraged.
Q: What happens then?
A: I just do something. I don't ever run out of ideas. The girls give me power, when I look at them. This is just the beginning. So much is still happening.
Q: How do you help other activists?
A: I collaborate. I share experiences. I have no money to help them, because I need to support Tasaru, but I give them all of the encouragement and information that I have.

As we left the UN, Agnes was whisked off to meet with UN officials, and Sally and Wendy and I climbed into one of the Narok-bound buses to hang out with the Maasai women while they waited. It was hot and dusty and we had stood during the entire ceremony, so it was delicious to sink into the chairs. First we chatted amongst ourselves while the Maasai women chatted amongst themselves. We were eager to be friendly and outgoing, but wanted to get into their rhythm. Then Sally stumbled upon something magical. She started to read Wendy's palm. The Maasai women were completely intrigued and soon lots of beautiful African hands were extended hungrily toward Sally. The lines—fate, love, longevity, family, creativity, were themes that were universal among all women. We all want to know. Is this my last love? Will I live long? What will give my life meaning, and what do I need to do to get there? What parts of my progress were or will be dotted with pain?

One woman was told that she had three small loves and one big love in her life. She pulled her hand away quickly to laugh the deep, true laugh of the found out, and her friends belly-laughed along with her like true girlfriends who are up in all of your beeswax. Eunice, a commanding presence in the van, is a fantastic example of what you get when you give education to the African girl child. She studied television production and worked in Nairobi, producing television shows for the Kenyan channel. She waited quite a while to get married, and when she did, she had four children. All are grown now. Two are doctors, one is a lawyer, and one is an international banker. She also founded an organization called RETO WOMEN, or "Help Women," engaged with providing education for little girls. She said that if you just stop FGM but don't also educate the girls, it is just not enough to give them the opportunity to have meaningful lives, and to promote the progress of future generations. According to Sally's palm reading, Eunice was born dependent but had to learn how to be independent and strong as she grew up. Eunice admitted that her mother had died when she was ten, and that she did have to fend for herself when her father remarried. "I prayed to God that I would be given the gift of being alive to raise my children until they are adults, so that they wouldn't have to go through what I did, with a stepmother, and so forth. And my prayer was answered."

Then they taught us the song that they had sung during the ceremony, and Eunice wrote down the words in my notebook. We all sang it together, and then Agnes came out, the van took off for our hotel, and Agnes dropped us off and our new friends gave us lots of hugs and kisses farewell. Our airplane was due to leave in five hours, and we had lots of last minute things to do.

Home Again October 27

So, we're back in the U.S. of A. Nathaniel took about two minutes to give me an aloof vibe before he was my no-holds-barred little biscuit d'amour once more. Honorée came with Peter to the airport and was poised at the ready with a bouquet of yellow mums. Her little, open face, with its unselfconscious happy smile, was the prettiest flower of all. Peter and Sally's husband Rusty made us travel-crusty chicas feel like homecoming queens with their great big hugs and kisses.

I wish that was the happy ending to this story. Sure, we made it back safe and sound, but I just can't be cool with that alone, go back to my life of very nice job, very nice house, very nice family…and forget about:

• the faces of girls from Agnes' Tasaru Rescue Center, leaving the UN ceremony on their bus back to Narok, leaning out of the windows to grab our hands and say goodbye as their bus pulled away. With those hand clasps, we made a wordless pact with them. I can still see the worn men's work shoes on their teenage feet, the grayed sports socks sagging on their beautiful strong calves. I want to send them all new shoes. Fierce, kickass shoes that will serve them as they do their chores and run and play and dance. And the brightest white ankle socks. Know what I mean?
• the beautiful, impassioned face of Dr. Isatou Tourey, Coordinator of GAMCOTRAP of the Gambia, where the FGM rate is a staggering 70% (it's not even against the law there—yet). She's the one with the 2 acres, just waiting for the funds to build a rescue center. And as someone at the conference said, it is so much cheaper to build in Africa than in the Western world. It won't take that much money to do it, mamas! Isatou sees the big picture. Her organization has founded fathers' clubs to wake men up to the full ramifications of FGM, while also fostering and supporting their role as fathers. She said, "Youth are future parents," so they give kids the full picture on FGM, too. She talks to educators, nurses, doctors, parents. She says, "Women's rights are human rights." She believes that you have to encounter anti-FGM strategies in a way that's context-specific, in terms of the area's religion and traditions, in order to root it out. She fights for education of the girl child, so that they can read the Koran and see that it does not call for FGM.
• Hadil El Kouly, of Egypt. She is 20 (!!!) years old, and works for the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance. They were able to combat FGM this past year by holding creative workshops for kids in Boulaq El-Dakrour. They talked about FGM, corrected wrong assumptions or teachings about it, taught new information on the issue, alerted attendees to the hazards, and gave the boys and girls the assignment to write and perform short plays on the topic. These plays were then acted out by participants before the community. Videos on the process are being made to serve as training tools for other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Ideally, CEWLA will be able to replicate this model on a comprehensive scale throughout Egypt.

Funny, out of all of the Swahili words Sally I learned, we never learned "Goodbye." I think that's because we're not done with Africa, the eradication of FGM, and the significance and intimacy of the women and girls we met, and the ones we didn't meet. I have been racked with the heartbreak of how vast the crisis is and how impotent I feel. But I have also been given the gift of appreciating the value of saving just one girl…at a time.